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I actually have TWO this week for One Local Summer, so I’m jamming them into one post instead of splitting them into two. This week was husband’s final week home before going out to a ship for quite a long while, so he took advantage of the time home to cook up a storm. This is me, not complaining. First up! A house favorite, biscuits and gravy with a side of yogurt and strawberries and of course, coffee. We made our biscuits with lard – I have no idea where the recipe came from, but if I find out, I’ll add a link – and they come out so delightful. We had the buttermilk for the gravy and it felt like it would be a slight not to include it in the biscuits as well. The flour is probably my favorite part of this. We actually have an old stone mill locally that buys their wheat from PA farmers and then mills it with a gigantic water wheel just a few minutes down the road. They sell it, along with cornmeal, to help fund the mill’s educational programs and it’s SUCH a delight to have locally grown and milled wheat available to us, not to mention the historic aspect of the fact that it was ground in a mill that’s 250 years old! In order to make the meal just a little more healthy, we added the side of strawberries and yogurt. The coffee? Not local, but I dare you to tell me that I can’t have it with breakfast.

I did mention this was a two-fer, right? Second local meal for the week features ribs with grilled vegetables, a cucumber salad and CHEESE. The ribs were cooked in the slow cooker first and then given a quick roast in the oven with our own homemade fruit ketchup using tomatoes and apples from the farmers market and peaches from our own tree. Pretty sure this is the same recipe we used from the Ball Canning Book for the ketchup. The veggies on the side were carrots, snap peas, and zucchini. Then there was the classic cucumber salad – cucumbers soaked in vinegar making not-quite-pickles, but a nice refreshing not-lettuce sort of salad for the side. Then there’s the CHEESE – I believe that’s all Birchrun Hills cheese between Fat Cat, Red Cat, and some Clipper. REALLY a good dinner – the ribs were absolutely perfect and it was a nice way to end a stormy evening.

Week four, cooked and consumed already during our One Local Summer. Husband was home again this weekend, so I was happy to step aside and let him take charge of the kitchen! The vegetable supply is really starting to diversify since so many farmers start seeds early, so we already have zucchini and snap peas available. The meal is a veal chop marinated in vinegar, salt and pepper, cider, and cilantro then grilled with some cheese on top. On the side are grilled carrots, snap peas, and zucchini and some more cheese (because there can always be more cheese), paired with a nice leafy green salad tossed with some olive oil and vinegar, and a glass of homebrewed cider. The cider we had here actually finished off a 5 gallon keg we’ve been nursing for over a year now, but fortunately we have the next batch ready to go, made from apples picked at my grandparents’ home some four hours west of where we live. Since the apples followed us on a trip we would’ve made anyway, I include them into local summer since their “food miles” didn’t count as just transporting food. We crushed and pressed the apples into cider ourselves, gave the juice some yeast, and let it do its thing. The resulting cider came out tart and dry, just how I like it, so while I’m a little sad to see this keg go, I’m also eager to see how the second batch tastes! Anyway, enough about the cider, the meal was a nice way to cap off the long holiday weekend since this was Monday’s dinner before husband left again for the week. Hopefully he’ll get in one last OLS meal before heading out on a long stretch for work, and then it’s all on me! I may have to entice some guest chefs to visit and contribute (read: beg friends to cook for me) during the summer.

This is the last week of catch-up posts, I swear. Well, at least for now. I can’t make promises about future weeks, but I’ll try to get them posted on the actual week that they’re made this time! I’m back by myself for this week, and went a little crazy with the vegetables. A neighbor had let his zucchini plants go a little wild and had a few baseball bats sitting on the vines. I graciously offered to take one off his hands so he didn’t have to ding-dong-ditch zucchini all over the neighborhood. It’s hard to tell underneath all the other vegetables, but I spiral sliced the zucchini with my new slicer and made zucchini pasta! I cooked that quickly in a big pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, just enough so it still had a little crunch to it, but was warmed thoroughly. In another pan, I had onions, fennel, and tomatoes cooking together to put on top of the zucchini pasta. The sausage was pan seared, carrots steamed, and potatoes roasted. Then the peaches! Oh it’s peach season and these are particularly perfect, eat-over-the-kitchen-sink-because-they-drip-everywhere, juicy and delicious peaches. I smothered them in blue cheese and baked them in the oven and they always make a perfect sweet and savory dessert. The plate is incredibly full this week, but it’s 90% vegetables, so I don’t feel bad about it, not one bit.

Another installment in the catch-up posts for One Local Summer. Husband had originally planned to do these pork chops on the grill, but the sky got dark and opened up so quickly that he ended up pan searing with the cast iron skillet and finishing it up in the oven. Apparently, this is my new favorite way to cook pork chops because I have never had a pork chop quite so perfectly juicy before. Pork can go from juicy and moist to shoe leather in a split second it seems, but man, skillet in the oven is IT. Even though it was delicious, I only managed to finish off half of that pork chop because of the ridiculous amount of veggies. Steamed green beans and carrots, that huge salad as usual, and then potatoes with olive oil, chives, and onions. Top that all off with a glass of Spring Wine from Chaddsford Winery and we have a great rainy day dinner.

Don’t tell anyone, but we’re actually a week ahead due to husband’s love of cooking local food. Really though, that’s fine, because at some point, we’ll end up being away or too busy or something and we’ll fall behind a week, so I figure this will all come out in the wash, as Willy Wonka might say. Husband is a big fan of the basics – meat, vegetable, and a salad makes a meal. However, it’s the prep and spices and whatnot that bring it far beyond that level. I’ve never had a complaint about any dinner, and how could I – my basic policy is that any meal I don’t have to cook is a good one! Enough babbling, onto the plate! First up, in the salad bowl, we have lettuce, turnips, radishes, and some carrots with a non local but homemade dressing. On the plate is a slice of a Pork Loin Roast on the rotisserie after being rubbed with pepper, maple sugar, and salt, glazed with red wine and maple syrup while being cooked. Then we have carrots drizzled with maple syrup, and grilled zucchini (a personal favorite). Topped the whole thing off with a glass of red wine and we had a lovely dinner.